Poor Heartless Thing
by Aslog
Summary: A dark story. A heart is lost and found. Fem!Harry and the Dark Lord. No flamers please, no copyright infringement intended. Please Review.


Poor Heartless Thing

The Dark Lord caught her heart.

In a fit of agony, writhing on the ministry floor Harriet tore her beating heart from her chest.

It was a heavy thing, so full of misery, that it was a relief when it was flung from her chest. It was a miracle it didn't hit the duelling death eaters and Order members.

It simply rolled away.

But of course the Dark Lord found it.

She had part of his soul, why shouldn't he have her heart?

They looked at her with pity now. All the students and teachers of Hogwarts, it was worse than second year.

They called her the heartless one. They acted like it had been stolen, like someone had cracked open her chest and taken it.

When she told them the truth, they looked sick.

Harriet didn't mind though, everything hurt less now. Glances that once would have made her squirm didn't affect her, cutting remarks rolled off her.

Everything was muted now. She walked the hallways in blessed peace.

It was a relief to have the silence.

No messy emotions, no pain. She was like a still lake and nothing disturbed her calm.

Her friends cast her worried looks.

"Let's get it back," they said.

She didn't want her heart back. Didn't want the ache of Sirius, her parents and Cedric in her veins.

"He could destroy it," they said, "He could destroy you."

"No, he wouldn't," she said, "He loves my heart."

She could feel every time he held her heart. Felt his long, spidery fingers stroke and caress the organ.

How often he squeezed it in the palm of his hands, like he wanted to extract all the life it had.

He wouldn't give it up.

He had been so long without a heart, he was fascinated by hers.

"This will kill you, you were never meant to be without a heart," Luna said, her large eyes filled with tears and her dreamy voice serious.

"I will live," Harriet replied.

Luna looked at her knowingly, "You need a new heart. Take his."

Harriet laughed, the Dark Lord didn't have a heart.

Soon Harriet began to feel empty. Her body began to freeze and the silence in her chest began to echo in her ears.

She stopped looking like a woman and started resembling a ghost. She was never warm and food tasted like ash in her mouth.

Harriet couldn't take it, so one day she caught a bird.

A pretty little blue bird with bright black eyes. It flew around so frantically that it reminded her of her heart.

So she trapped it in her chest.

For a little while, it thrashed inside of her and she almost felt real again.

But soon it died and her chest was left silent once again.

Perhaps this was what drove the Dark Lord mad.

His chest had been empty for years. More years without a heart than with one.

The silent echo must be terrible, so he filled it with screams.

Harriet tried to fill the silence inside of her with screams but it didn't work for her.

The Dark Lord had decided long ago that love was a weakness.

But he held her heart in his hands and that was no small thing.

Harriet knew where his heart was now.

The Dark lord couldn't hold her heart, without Harriet knowing where his was.

It was a useless bit of meat, his heart. So the Dark Lord had tossed it into the ocean long ago. To be sunk and never found.

A treasure never to be spoken of again.

So Harriet went under the waves, it was cold and dark and she was tempted to never leave. The pressure of the ocean drowned out her emptiness.

The water pulled her to and fro, and there was a time she despaired.

For the ocean did not give its secrets up.

But she found it. His heart.

Trapped in a black lead box. Untouched by time but sealed with potent spells. She held it up to her ear and could hear its faint thump.

She swam slowly up to the surface and into a cave. Gently, ever so gently she undid the magic guarding his heart.

Like untangling a twisted necklace, it was slow, delicate work but no spell could keep her out.

After all, he had her heart.

It was a black withered thing, The Dark Lords heart

Barely beating and stunted. It looked more like the root of a knurled tree.

It was a pitiable thing.

But it was the only heart she had.

Once again she pried open her chest and placed the organ within.

It was slow to start beating inside of her. It barely remembered warmth.

Harriet screamed as the Dark Lord screamed, as his heart began beating in a frantic tempo.

She screamed his rage, pain, hate and misery.

She screamed for hours and days, until storms clouds brewed and thrashed outside the cave.

The sea raged and storms beat down. It was relentless for days, as Harriet once again learned how to live with a heart.

After three days and nights, he came to her.

Her heart bloody in his hands, clutched tightly to his side.

It was smaller than she thought it should be.

Like his, there hadn't been enough love and it was stunted.

The Dark Lord was white as a sheet, looking gaunt and ghostly. He smiled a terrible smile as he raised her heart to his lips and bit into it.

Every mouthful pierced her like a knife.

He kept eating, until there was nothing left but the blood on his hands.

Harriet just laughed.

He couldn't give her heart back now.

"I do, in sickness and in heath, to death do us part," she said, her voice rough from screams.

His teeth were red as he smiled down at her.

"To love and cherish you, what husband would do less?"

She began to cry as he took her away with him.


End file.
